Hacker News: gumby271

New comment by gumby271 in "How to disable or avoid intrusive AI"

gumby271 — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 16:36:50 +0000

I think people like AI tools when it's their choice to engage with them and they set the terms. I have a good experience with Claude largely because I choose when to use it and when I don't care about it's existence, its gone. But the stupid glowing, animated, overlapping Copilot button in Word is the dumbest thing imaginable. I don't want it, and I cant stop being reminded of it.

The simple distinction of pro vs anti ai isn't the root cause, its about individual control and choice which can span both of those stances.

New comment by gumby271 in "Flutter 3.47"

gumby271 — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 17:10:42 +0000

Oh totally agreed, I went through the same thought process 8 years ago at my last job and decided against Flutter too. I really wanted to, it was just too new as a Google product. I'm happy I get to use it now, it's solid.

New comment by gumby271 in "Flutter 3.47"

gumby271 — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 14:34:08 +0000

Flutter is 9 years old at this point. I do hope they move it its own open source foundation since a ton of apps use it, having all that under Google's control isn't the best (looking at you too Android)

New comment by gumby271 in "Flutter 3.47"

gumby271 — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:46:37 +0000

How are they limping? Flutter has completely replaced it's rendering engine across all platforms and they're building out major window management support on desktop platforms.

At some point there's just not much exciting new stuff to add. Flutter is a nice stable platform, I'd highly recommend it.

Flutter 3.47

gumby271 — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 23:46:00 +0000

Article URL: https://flutter.dev/blog/whats-new-in-flutter-3-47

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49280061

Points: 206

# Comments: 215

New comment by gumby271 in "Pixel 11 Pro Fold"

gumby271 — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 23:22:16 +0000

By durable I guess I mean they don't destroy themselves just by existing.

New comment by gumby271 in "Pixel Watch 5"

gumby271 — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 22:25:28 +0000

That's cool, I didn't see that mentioned in the article.

New comment by gumby271 in "Pixel 11 Pro Fold"

gumby271 — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 20:43:00 +0000

I have a feeling that making durable fold in half cell phones is just not something we can do cheaply, so they have to be billed as premium to justify it.

Also isn't that terminology settled? Fold for passport, flip for flip phone. I'm sure Apple will invent a new word but everyone doing foldables seems to use those consistently.

New comment by gumby271 in "Pixel Watch 5"

gumby271 — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 19:40:57 +0000

I knew I'd seen that city gif with the lines before: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/12/improving-...

> From the 2026 article: "But you also need really good AI to do it right"

So a feature from 2020 (albeit a cool one) is now brand new and AI powered? Did Google have good AI in 2020 and replace it with Gemini?

New comment by gumby271 in "The 11 Types of Washington, DC, Metro Station Architecture (2018)"

gumby271 — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 16:41:35 +0000

The DC metro stations with this architecture (and several of the federal buildings downtown in a similar brutalist style) are some of my favorite places. Growing up in the area, the Metro was so exciting for field trips. It felt like being a grown up in a different underground world. The dramatic lighting, weird smell, and cave temperature of the underground ones feel so special to me. Built like a cathedral, stripped down to only the practical parts. Even commuting as an adult it feels special, those senses come back every time. I'm glad they have the same dirty hexagonal tiles at every station too!

New comment by gumby271 in "Waymo in Dallas"

gumby271 — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 20:00:08 +0000

Dallmatians

New comment by gumby271 in "Native Apps Should Be Avoided Whenever Possible"

gumby271 — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 03:00:22 +0000

I get the feeling this article is just about mobile apps, which you clearly think is an irremediable platform for some reason. Given ths choice between native mobile apps, locked down by two massive tech companies and web apps, I'll take the latter.

New comment by gumby271 in "Astro Loop"

gumby271 — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 15:13:11 +0000

Omg it's a Asteroids Vampire Survivors, that's such a good idea! Love seeing android apps distributed independently too. Excited to play!

New comment by gumby271 in "Google Won't Fix the Android Camera, So I Did"

gumby271 — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 15:01:40 +0000

To be clear, I am not the creator of this app. I find their work incredibly impressive and want to get the word out about what they've done!

Google Won't Fix the Android Camera, So I Did

gumby271 — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 14:48:48 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2b4P94QSKE

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49110852

Points: 4

# Comments: 2

New comment by gumby271 in "VLC for Unity now supported on Linux"

gumby271 — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 14:53:51 +0000

Except at least there are alternatives to Unity without replacing your entire OS and hardware.

New comment by gumby271 in "Advertise in ChatGPT"

gumby271 — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 19:50:59 +0000

I think this is very much already a thing. Have a bot spam Reddit, which Google uses heavily for their AI summaries, and get free advertising and steering of the top of the Google search results page. We basically speed-ran SEO but for AI results.

New comment by gumby271 in "How to Follow a Drummer"

gumby271 — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 19:29:27 +0000

> Division is free, multiplication is prediction

I'm so tired

New comment by gumby271 in "Google Chrome Installed a 4GB AI Model on Your PC"

gumby271 — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 17:11:24 +0000

> But saying "Google = bad, me uninstall Google, if you use Google Chrome you are an idiot" are not a productive feedback for a product owner there.

I wasn't? I hope that wasn't directed at me since we seem to kind of agree otherwise.

Unfortunately the vast majority of Chrome users wont understand that prompt. Google decided that the Chrome installer should be 4GB, that seems like a large web browser, but is it that crazy compared to anything else? Teams on my Mac is taking 1GB+ just in Applications (not to say I'm terribly happy about that). Chrome installs its own updates and has for a very long time, ensuring we dont have to support super old browser versions, I'm not sure where the line is.

New comment by gumby271 in "Google Chrome Installed a 4GB AI Model on Your PC"

gumby271 — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 16:55:31 +0000

I'm sorry but the AI model that was forced to write this article is struggling to explain why this is a problem. I get that a chrome update that suddenly balloons to 4gb+ is stupid, that's fair, but I'm not sure I understand the rest of the issues. They don't like the off-device AI features Google is forcing into everything, but they also don't like the on-device AI features since they don't do enough?

Aside from taking up a lot of space as a web browser, I'm not sure I get it. Their explanation that Apple's version of this is fine but Google's isn't is wild too.